Auto attach - ignore glyphs with no anchors

Hello,

I have a ligature(2) of 4 components: [0.base, 1.ornament, 2.ornament, 3.base],
and only the 2 base glyphs have top anchors,
then I activated Auto Attach for the ligature glyph and got 2 reference anchors: top (on 0.base) and top3 (on 3.base).

Is there a way to make the Auto Attach ignore the ornament glyphs and give the anchors: top (on 0.base) and top1 (on 3.base)?

I tried changing the OT class of the ornament glyphs to unassigned and component but it seems not to affect the recognition of anchors.

That will only work if the others are set as Mark.

But what do you want to accomplish?

I have an Arabic ligature combining the letters Sad and Reh, which are connected using cursive attachment along with other shapes and components. Both Sad and Reh should receive diacritical marks (Tashkeel) when using the font. However, the marks on the second letter, Reh, are not showing up correctly because the connecting shapes are being treated as separate glyphs.

To solve this issue I turned off the auto attach and placed the anchors manually on the first and last glyphs as top & top1, although it would be more convenient if it could simply reference the anchors from their bases.

Thank you for your clarification. It might indeed be nice if it works that way. I will think about it.

Thank you for your time.

I have another question that I’m unsure about and would appreciate your guidance on.

Is there a way to choose which anchor the auto-attached mark should connect to? For example, in this image, I have a Sad-Yeh ligature, which is a combination of Sad-AlefMaksura with two dots below. The two dots should attach to the second anchor below, leaving the first anchor free for diacritics when using the font. However, in auto-attach mode, the marks automatically take the first available anchor instead.
Screenshot 2024-09-19 011030.png

What formula do you see when you select Edit → Custom Formula from the main menu?

I think it should work if it is:

sad-arab+alefmaksura-arab+twodotsbelow

sadalefmaksura-arab.isol+symboltwodotsbelowmod-arab

There is no straightforward solution right now.

One workaround, is to add a dummy mark glyph to your font, and then use this formula:
sadalefmaksura-arab.isol+_dummy+symboltwodotsbelowmod-arab

Then make sure the dummy is excluded from export.

Thank you! this workaround made the process way better :slight_smile: